As if the winds of war weren’t already approaching gale force in the wrong direction for the US and its NATO counterparts in Afghanistan, contrary to Administration talking points designed to polish this turd of an Occupation, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales went on a village-to-village, house-to-house killing spree. With whatever thought process he had at his disposal after three combat tours in Iraq, he permanently liberated by summary execution 16 Afghan villagers from the Taliban. To make matters worse for embattled US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Bales admitted it. Not even a shot, excuse the double entendre, at an effective cover-up.

Before the cordite – or more accurately, smoke from the charred remains of victims, including pre-teens and toddlers – had even settled in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai in Kandahar province, stock apologies began to roll out from NATO heavy weights, followed by new song-and-dances from Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Familiar outcries of recrimination laced with demands for answers and the removal of ISAF security forces from every Afghan village outpost are making those villas in Dubai look better with every massacre.

As if synchronized, and against a backdrop of an early cherry blossom bloom, atonement echoed from the White House Rose Garden. After all, with more than ten years in southern Asia and almost as many end states for victory, apologies are now Commander-in-Chief stock-in-trade. Once again our latest war president pledged a thorough investigation, and then followed up with a very Presidential, in fact rhetorically perfect, act of contrition.

“We’re heartbroken over the loss of innocent life. The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous and it’s unacceptable. It’s not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military.”

The only thing missing, besides a rubber-stamped “hearts and prayers” sign off – was the unlikely absolution.

But there was something else.

This latest heartfelt overture had an oddly familiar ring. It was aggravating and then it started to come to me, like the closing credits from Hearts and Minds scrolling into view, flashes from the past. There it was again – “It’s not who we are…not who we are as a country.”

Like just last May, while responding to requests for the release of photos of his trophy kill, Bin Laden – the first of several mission objectives in Afghanistan:

“We don’t need to spike the football…that’s not who we are.”

Obviously, that would be more distasteful than opting for a headshot in the first place, or providing Osama a cell in Leavenworth, without internet privileges, next to Bales.

That’s just not who we are. Seriously?

And the very same day at the UN, speaking after a Security Council meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gravely announced:

“Like many Americans I was shocked and saddened by the killings of innocent Afghan villagers this weekend. We send our condolences to families who have lost their loved ones and to the people of Afghanistan…”

Wait…wait…are you ready for it?

“…This is not who we are.” There it is again.

And then again last September, while chastising a GOP Presidential debate audience for booing a gay soldier and cheering at the prospect of someone dying without health care:

“That’s not reflective of who we are.” Let’s go to the replay.

Is there a pattern here?

This is not who we really are. If this is not who we are, then who the hell are we?

And why would the rest of the world share this sentiment, after Fallujah, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Haditha or our increasing reliance on drone attacks for prosecuting a war on suspected terrorists, as well as innocent bystanders? It’s a tough sell after Obama’s first term and almost 300 Drone attacks on Pakistan alone. According to a February 2012 report by the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism in cooperation with the London Sunday Times, between 282 and 535 civilians had been killed, including 60 children, by CIA and Air Force joy-stick jockeys over eight thousand miles away. To make matters worse, tactics now include targeting responders tending to the wounded.

But this is not who we are?

Secretary Panetta might have summed it up inadvertently last week when he admitted that “these things happen, and they’ll probably happen again.” And again, and again, and again. Do Americans even care anymore, or have we become so inured to hostility that atrocities have become interchangeable with normalcy, a metaplasia as insidious as the slow boil of the 10,000-day war in Vietnam? And we all know how well that went.

While all this started to sink in, as well as the fact that our country’s new signature wartime mass-killing had taken place the week of the My Lai massacre’s 44th anniversary, it was announced that Bales will be represented by Seattle’s brash, flamboyant defense counsel John Henry Browne, a hired gun for the indefensible. A case like Bales’ is right in Browne’s wheelhouse, having gained his share of notoriety over time representing serial killers and mass murderers like Ted Bundy and Seattle’s Benjamin Ng.

In fact, it only took Browne one meeting with the defendant to come up with the perfect plan for starters. “I think the war is on trial, I think the war should be on trial, and I’m hoping that the war will be on trial.”

Most of the underpinnings for disaster have been hiding in plain sight in the kill zones of Afghanistan much longer than the Pentagon will admit. Multiple deployments, nonstop asymmetric warfare, circular mistrust of US and Afghan counterparts, sliding timelines and phantom end-states point to more frayed psyches, and hate for hate atrocities – kill teams, desecrating bodies and religious artifacts, night raids resulting in injury or death and the wanton destruction of property, most spun as the acts of rogue soldiers.

Can this possibly be reflective of who we are?

In a recent article in The American Scholar, Afghanistan: The Gathering Menace, by embedded journalist Neil Shea, an Army sergeant encapsulates the mood, if not the state of our combat force in Southwest Asia in 2012, trapped in the midst of a failed policy for far too long:

“This is where I come to do f*cked-up things.”

His face had been clear and smooth, his smile almost shy. It was a statement of happy expectation, as though Afghanistan were a playground. He was the de facto leader of a platoon I will call Destroyer, and although he is a real person, not a composite, I have heard his words in many variations, from many American combat troops. But he and some of his men were the first I had met who seemed very near to committing the dumb and vicious acts that we call war crimes.

If this is not who we are, it is what we are becoming.

In most criminal cases, multiple versions of the truth may exist, even in Kandahar province. As the defense team sifts through the detritus of forensics and motive, it is likely that long-overdue light will be focused, not diffused, on the grit of causation in a failed state, and not solely Afghanistan but US intervention in Southwest Asia and elsewhere.

However long it takes before the defense rests, there will be more than ample culpability to go around, but nowhere near enough justice – and certainly not for Afghan villager Abdul Samad’s nine children, whose worst nightmares were realized before they could even yawn or wipe the sleep from their eyes.

Then again this just might be one of those times when even an unrivaled counsel for the defense will have to settle for a higher power to sort things out.

201203938427 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fgene-marx%2F2012%2F03%2F23%2Fthis-is-not-who-we-are-oh-yeah%2F%27This+Is+Not+Who+We+Are%27++-+Oh+Yeah%3F2012-03-24+06%3A00%3A21Gene+Marxhttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012039384 to “‘This Is Not Who We Are’ – Oh Yeah?”

It's not only who we are, it's who we've always been. If the dead could speak, any slave or Native American could tell you that.

George Santayana told us that those who couldn't remember history were condemned to repeat it, and our sanitized history books and distorted journalism ensure thriving business for the merchants of death and ample opportunities for sadists and bigots.

Recently saw one of those prison stories on that Locked Up show or whatever it is called. I'm sorry I watched (there's a first time for everything). After looking at those tatooed weirdos in cages, constantly working out, who when interviewed speak of those they have killed without a shred of compassion, but enjoying the chance to brag a bit before going back to their monotonous environment (well, one guy says he likes looking up at the sky, gives him a chance to be at one with nature), I do know who we are. So when I hear a politician speak of an atrocity like the most recent one we know of, I'll always have this prison in the back of my mind. We have mixed the relatively innocent drug addict with the lifelong gang member, and made both of them worse. It's what we do. It's who we are. We are reformers who maim.

As the man once said "war is the rich-man's terrorism." Of what value are the plethora of international treaties, conventions and laws designed to protect the non-combatants caught up in a war zone? It appears that there are two criteria…one for the powerful and one for the less-than-powerful. If you are in the latter category we will hunt you down and prosecute you for that what we do today…if you are fortunate enough to be a powerful nation…than the Hell with the law…do whatever you want.

One thing you will never hear is a politician stating that, yes, this is in fact who we are because the 99% of the citizens who are NOT actively prosecuting these wars (those not in the military) do not want to admit that America, that "exceptional" nation, that beacon on the hill for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, are hollow Madison Avenue fictions. If a pol dared to state the truth their career as a pol would be over in a blink of an eye. And no politician is really interested in willingly giving up the power and the prestige for a real job.

This IS who we are. And one day, we might, as a nation, admit it to ourselves.

According to libertarian writer Radley Balko, who covers police abuse and civil liberties issues, we have an average of 150 no knock SWAT team raids a day in the US. Yea…that IS who we are. It is definitely who we are.

Whenever I hear the criminal caste babble this "Not who we are" bull**** I always say, "Who is this WE you're talking about MOFO?" …. I don't recall ever telling someone to pick up a gun and travel someplace, anyplace, and abuse or even kill people who've never done me any harm.

I've got a theory about everything around 9/11, and not just from the catchphrase: "You don't roll out a new product in August" – everything about it screamed advertising for a war in the Mideast – every motivational lever was pulled. It rolled out in September, when a product will really get the public attention. The people most used to being motivated to take that coupon to the local superstore were the most supportive. Sales resistance crumbled like those three buildings in Lower Manhattan. Three, count 'em, three, practically perfect in every way.

But that was then and this is now. What in the world could sell us on attacking Iran? I could guess that it would involve innocents. Holy innocents. So that we could kill theirs.

And the SWAT teams are getting to look more and more like their counterparts in Afghanistan aren't they? There was just a bank robbery by career criminals in a city north of Boston. The massed forces of police from several districts killed one and followed two to an apartment building. They say one more is at large, so, for the protection of the public, the neighborhood was "on lockdown" like some school with a shooter. The SWAT teams are in some ways just like soldiers in Afghanistan and they are looking for that Taliban fighter you might say, always aware that even in this middle class neighborhood they might find insurgents too — or so the theory might evolve with time.

Yes, it's a problem when four well-armed bank robbers who should still be behind bars are out there threatening people, but according to some residents, they felt threatened by the gun battle too, between police and suspects. Of course when this happens in LA, it is always in the ghetto or on the 110 freeway, so everyone is inured to the disturbance and practically considers it normal. In Malden, Massachusetts, they called it "the wild west." Unfortunately, it might represent a trend.

A few years ago the same kind of SWAT team locked down Needham, Mass., but why? They were after a man who had beaten another man to death with a baseball bat – who was now unarmed because he left his truck behind and also the broken bat. But the town was treated as though he was just as dangerous as the four armed bank robbers. That tells me this type of "no quarter" warlike behavior is accepted by the state. In fact, my town's police chief has gone to Israel for anti-terror training too. I never thought I'd turn into a Palestinian after thirteen generations in America, but neither did they in their "homeland" I guess.

A nation of self-proclaimed "indispensables," able and willing to do whatever nobody else can stop us from doing: 5% of the world's population consuming 25% of the world's resources and creating 40% of the world's garbage, pollution, toxic waste, and poison.

Undoubtedly the US armed forces have a distinguished track record. After all, very few have gone from invading, plundering, stealing, and eventually driving to extinction the native people of the land they call the US to doing the same in the rest of the world, for what else has driven the WASP elites but a wanton, vulgar and criminal desire to get hold of other people's resources, treasure and even their dreams? However, apparently this is coming to an end, and what may terminate this is not a failure in the battlefield but a failure in the realm of morality. When the US leaves with their tails between their legs, the world will see in all its magnificent magnitude the great moral mess they created not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq and in other countries, lands that Americans invaded and pillaged because they could.

Everybody is all pissed off at the mindless killing of the innocent Afghanis, and everybody is bitterly blaming us–that is, WE– for the carnage. This is all wrong for the following reason:

The American people are some of the best people in the world. They are 180 degrees opposite in character to the gang who happens to run their country now.

The guy who said, “that’s not who we are.” was simply referring to the American people, and in that sense he was dead right: that’s not who we are. Had he referred to the gang in charge of wars, he would have been wrong to falsely claim: that’s not who we are. No, sir, that’s exactly who you and your gang are!

He should have used another word to specify the murderous gang of which he’s a part, even though indirectly. This gang is not part of the American people but chummy friend of another gang in Israel, who, by the way, is not really Jewish in character either.

This is who we are: "Most of the underpinnings for disaster have been hiding in plain sight in the kill zones of Afghanistan much longer than the Pentagon will admit. Multiple deployments, nonstop asymmetric warfare, circular mistrust of US and Afghan counterparts, sliding timelines and phantom end-states point to more frayed psyches, and hate for hate atrocities – kill teams, desecrating bodies and religious artifacts, night raids resulting in injury or death and the wanton destruction of property, most spun as the acts of rogue soldiers." Goodness gracious! It's just like Vietnam, Korea, World Wars I and II, (Weren't we the good guys then? Better take another look.) Look at the Indian Wars. Look at the Civil War. Go all the way back. This is who we are. You won't like what you see.

You took the words right out of my mouth. This country was founded on violence and slaughter. I just learned that we invaded and occupied Haiti for 15 years and used waterboarding on innocent male civliians in the Phillipines under Teddy Roosevelt. But those who are repeating history may find that it has a curve in it: there will be retribution in this lifetime.

I agree, also. Unfortunately, how that is accomplished is to vote those responsible OUT of office. As we are able to see, that doesn't get done because, well, the individual voters' Representative is not the one responsible – he/she is a good person and does good stuff for Mr. Citizen so there is no reason to vote them out – vote the other guy out instead. And if by chance one of the career pols ARE voted out, they are replaced by something worse – something more ideological and intransigent in stance.

The bottom line…nothing usually gets done, the same people are returned year after year or are replaced by someone worse. People who are capable and able to affect change never get close enough to do anything.